


Chewy Ginger Cookies

by peetastrophe



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 22:36:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2828498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peetastrophe/pseuds/peetastrophe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peeta can’t find the words to tell Katniss how he feels but cookies have always bridged the distance between them. Slightly AU. Written for Holidays in Panem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chewy Ginger Cookies

In the smallest district of Panem there lived a baker and his wife and their three sons. The baker was as large and ruddy as his wife was thin and pale. The oldest son took after his mother, with straw-like yellow hair. The middle son took after his father, but with a mischievous gleam in his eye like his mother. It was the youngest son, however, who had inherited his father’s kind spirit and gentleness.

Every December when the days grew short and the winds whipped flurries of snow into your face, the baker would slip a treat into his sons’ lunch pails. The cookies, steaming, aromatic with spices, and dense with molasses were received differently by each son.

The oldest son, knowing how angry his mother would be that expensive ingredients were wasted for such a frivolous gift, would hurriedly toss his cookie aside to be buried by the snow drifts.

The middle son would quickly scarf his down before anyone else could smell it and take it from him.

The youngest son, with his blond curls and bright blue eyes, would share it with his classmates at lunch time. Chubby merchant fingers and slim Seam fingers alike would pull at the delicious treat and it would be gone in moments, but he always saved half for the girl with the silver eyes and shiny black braids down her back who would hang back shyly.

She would always give him a grateful smile as she tucked it away in her smock and the guilt he felt for withholding part of his treat from the class would melt away. He didn’t mind that she wouldn’t take a single bite but would instead give it to her younger sister with the two braids down her back, blonde instead black.

Once their tall miner father had spotted Peeta hidden behind a fence post watching them and had thrown him a wink that seemed to say I’ll see you in a few years, son, and Peeta allowed himself to hope that he would in fact see him in a few years asking about a certain daughter.

The year the sirens went off in the district and drowned out the frightened screams of children and panicked sobs of the miner’s wives, he gave her his entire cookie. A few months later he would toss her a burned loaf in the rain but for now the dense spiced cookie would have to suffice. And for the first time he saw her take a bite and smile at him. It reminded him of the sun that had just broken through the woolen winter clouds and for a moment he had hope that one day she would like him as much as he liked her.

So after the reaping, when he saw a package of his father’s cookies tumble to the tracks and burst open in a patch of dandelions he knew that he couldn’t afford to think like that anymore.

_6 months later ___

Peeta trudges across the snowy lane, his prosthetic leg leaving a trail behind him. In his hands is a crisp white Mellark’s bag, and inside a giant spiced cookie.

Katniss gasps when she opens the bag and he fells that flicker in his chest again. Perhaps they really could find their way back to each other again.

**Author's Note:**

> And that concludes my first official THG fanfic. Anyone who follows me on tumblr knows that I am really into Everlark so expect more of that. Thanks for reading!


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